The Iranians did not invent suicide bombing, but they certainly promoted its use, especially by their surrogates against Israel.

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I have been dying to repeat this anecdote, but could never quite find the right
opportunity to do so. Now I think I have it.

The story, heard first-hand,
is that several years back, when an Israeli diplomat was about to leave Beijing
after completing her service as a consul there, her Chinese counterpart
presented her with a gift: a beautiful leather-bound, hand-embossed copy of the
Protocols of the Elders of Zion, one of the most notorious anti-Semitic tracts
ever published outside of Mein Kampf.

With extended hands and bowed head
she explained: “We want to be like you People, the Jews. We also want to own the
banks and Hollywood and control the media. We respect you greatly.”

What
brought the incident to mind was the observation made by an analyst in a meeting
recently that perhaps we don’t understand the Iranians as well as we think we
do, just as this Chinese diplomat thought she may have understood Israel, but
not quite.

In the Chinese case the misunderstanding, which obviously
emanated from a good place, could have caused mild insult or, at worst, a minor
diplomatic incident if someone really wanted to make an issue of things. With
the Iranians, however, cultural misunderstandings can have strategic
consequences.

The Iranian leadership has usually been credited with
“rational thinking” – sort of religious fanatics with good business acumen. This
is now being questioned. Iran is not reacting to the several crises it faces in
the rational if bellicose way that the experts had come to expect.

Take
the huge internal economic problems it faces. Its currency has devalued by more
than 50 percent in recent months. You would think that international sanctions
would be the last thing they would want. That they would open up their nuclear
facilities for international inspection in the same measured, clever,
disingenuous way they have in the past, to avoid even more economic pressures
like the current embargo.

You would think that with the threat of an
American, or Israeli, attack on its nuclear facilities, the last thing the
regime would be doing is playing games in the Gulf, bringing American and allied
war ships into the zone, negating any threat Iran can pose there and enraging
the Arab oil-producing states at the same time.

If the Americans are
looking for a reason to actually stop the Iranians from having a nuclear weapon,
as President Barack Obama has explicitly promised, and if 2012 is a critical
year because this is the year the program goes underground and becomes
impenetrable, why give the Americans a potential “trigger” by messing about in
the Gulf?

Any rational businessman, even the most devout ayatollah, knows that
messing with the world’s oil supply is one sure way to make enemies even of
close friends. Even China and Russia are beginning to shake their heads. Russia
has its own energy and can’t be threatened and the Chinese are looking
elsewhere.

If worried about an Israeli strike, Iran should be looking
toward international forums for protection and sympathy, not challenging them;
forging bonds with the Europeans, not threatening them; courting the Arabs, not
turning them into enemies.

Providing the Americans with a potential
trigger in the Gulf; sending supporters to look for energy elsewhere; isolating
oneself at a time of a hemorrhaging internal economic crisis, when exports and
international relations are so important; marching backward while the Arab world
tries to look forward to a better future; and reacting to the loss of key allies
by alienating the few friends you have demonstrates neither business acumen nor
logic, but a march into the books of folly.

Unless, that is, there is
something we just don’t quite see; something in the plot that makes people turn
a compliment into an unintended insult, a well-intended gesture into a deep
lesson on the importance of the cultural context in international
relations.

There are many former Iranians serving in the multitude of
intelligence services that follow the ayatollahs and their regime, but distance
comes with a cost. There were similar multitudes of former Iraqis working in the
same intelligence services when George W. Bush went to war to stop Saddam’s
nonconventional weapons program, no trace of which was ever found – well,
almost.

Ongoing contacts with sources, reading the Iranian press,
watching Iranian Internet sites and television, Tweets and other links, provide
a lot of information, almost too much. Texture, however, is another thing, and
just as the seasoned Chinese diplomat made a slight mistake in something she
thought she had a perfect understanding of, so we may be looking at today’s Iran
through the wrong glasses, relying on opinions from experts who are removed and
encased in calcified preconceptions, and not being sensitive enough to discern
why seemingly potentially self-defeating policies are emanating from what all
assumed to be a pragmatic, if over-zealous, Iranian leadership.

The
Iranians did not invent suicide bombing, but they certainly promoted its use,
especially by their surrogates against Israel. Many of those who served as human
bombs did so because they thought heaven had a lot more to offer than life on
this earth, the 70 virgins that come with the deal often being a great
incentive.

Who knows what’s going on in the minds of the ayatollahs? They
certainly don’t seem overly concerned about the cash register at the
moment.

Let’s just hope they’re not going for the virgins.

The
writer is a senior research associate at the Institute for National Security
Studies at Tel Aviv University. His most recent book, The Anatomy of Israel’s
Survival, was recently awarded the 2011 National Jewish Book Award in the
History category.

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